Capitol ships are now mostly these days being treated like ships of the wall, this shouldnt be the case though a role that should at least belong to the battleships. They should serve as fleet centers, things that the rest of the fleet flocks too for assistance and to help protect its ability to bring to the battlefield. This is however a probelm with scaling of course any issue can become more serious when mass numbers are involved. Though I havent been to any front lines in eve in over two years I know that the problem is getting pertty bad when reports of nothing but alot of super carriers showing up and with little support and wiping out entire hostile mixed fleets with them. Many capitol ship fleets today could seem like they can go about with reckless abandon and plow though most issues without fear of losing the entire fleet easily as a battleship fleet could.

I have to say though the most contributing to that problem is that capitols ships have certainly too much HP, way to much to be able to withstand entire fleets barrages and shrug it off with so much remote reps laying down on it.

The second factor is probably more of a technical issue than actual issue, is the inability for smaller ships to truely protect the larger ships. If the enemy calls a ship alpha target there is litterally nothing the rest of the fleet can really do to save that one ship other than to call the other targets alpha and fire back. This creates a war of attricion of who can wittle away at the fleet the fastest. A couple creative solutions come to mind but scalability may be an issue, Ships like a force field generating ship would stop shots from entering its protective fields. Or the ability to command drones to dogfight hostile drones, or FOF guns/missiles that target drones and missiles and ships specialized to use PDS.

Then factor in that capitol ships can seemingly have more options to disengage from a fight they commit to make thier survivability less trivial though true its possible to catch a cap ship and destroy it, its very difficult to do so these days with some ships being immune to EW increases the favorability in use in combat.

Another factor though minor is the combat limititation to 250kms give or take, arena most of these battles take place in feels they needed to be boosted by a good 400kms to give breathing room and create zones of control as well as increase strategetic depth a little.

Also the jobs that capitol ships do dont feel capitol ship enough, thier bonsues thier abilities are just slightly greater than lesser ships of equal tonnage. This is to the point that people use capitol ships to reduce fleet size needs to get the same job done. In my opinion I strongly belive that anything a capitol ship brings to the yard must be something exclusive to thier field of battle only and that the lesser ships would fill in the gap cap ships previously provided.

Originally by:Nova FoxShips like a force field generating ship would stop shots from entering its protective fields.

Lol. No.Hey, somebody is about to blow up my 3 bil isk battleship.Bring alt, cloak next to ship, when stuff gets nasty, decloak and save ship.This is just as stupid as a carrier + ship camp on station where the carrier scoops the smaller ship when stuff gets hot.

Originally by:Nova FoxOr the ability to command drones to dogfight hostile drones

I think this is actually an ok idea, but then large ships could easily take down drones without having to lock them, where locking on battleships is made so that it takes a while to lock small stuff.

Originally by:Nova Foxor FOF guns/missiles that target drones and missiles

If FoF missiles could be programmed to hit only drones they could also be programmed to hit only ships, which they don't, so that doesn't make any sense. As for targeting missiles, there are always defenders.

I agree today's battlefields, especially in nullsec, have way too many capitals and not enough smaller ships (apart from dictors to keep the other supercaps where you want them and a couple of guardians) but that happens to every MMO. After a while everybody has a big gun to bring and it just turns to a slugfest to see who has more guns. In the end, the guy with the biggest fleet always wins. Computer games are about numbers, not about the guy in the hero battleship saving the day. That just won't happen here, especially not with battleships shooting supercarriers. The battleship simply dies faster because it is a much lower class. And why would you bring 20 battleships (and risk losing them) to kill the enemy's 20 battleships if you can just bring a supercarrier and **** all?

Originally by:Nova FoxAnother factor though minor is the combat limititation to 250kms give or take, arena most of these battles take place in feels they needed to be boosted by a good 400kms to give breathing room and create zones of control as well as increase strategetic depth a little.

It is really closer to 150km, after that you can be probed and the fleet can warp in on you.

That is why you don't see a lot Sniper Battleships and the engagement range is limited to between 60 and 90km.

Posted - 2011.06.08 17:47:00 -
[4]
A couple of comments:- A capital ship is not necessarily a fleet center. You used the term "ship of the wall", so I'm going to point you to the Honorverse (where I assume you got it) and remind you that battleships are utterly obsoleted by dreads and SDs (titans). Most large fights were EXCLUSIVELY determined by dreads and SDs in this series.- You seem to be effectively arguing that because we have lots of supercarriers and titans on the field that it's "capital ships online" (a much more succinct way of expressing your entire argument, btw). I'd argue that we're well beyond "capital ships online" and well into "supercaps online".- Many of the problems with cap ships are related to their raw mobility. While they're not very mobile once they're on the field, they're extremely mobile beforehand. This is something that I think Wormhole space definitely got right - getting a capital ship into a lower class WH is a big deal.- While I'm a huge fan of teamwork, I don't really see how it makes any sense for a couple small ships to somehow protect a bigger ship. Maybe something like gang bonuses -- but we have those. Maybe something like RR -- but we have that. What are we missing?- I'm not sure what impact increasing lock range and/or grid size will have. Probably none, since I've seen many grids with 500km size or more and it has never affected my fights.- I'm very curious what ship smaller than a carrier can do triage carrier duty, and what ship smaller than a dread is capable of putting out 5K DPS onto a sov structure/POS.

I guess in the end:- You seem to say we have "capital ships online" and then tell us how there should be less of them, but they should be more powerful. I'm... kinda at a loss there.- I think a lot of the problems I see with Eve are very cleverly solved with WH space - including capital ship projection and blobbing.

Posted - 2011.06.08 18:20:00 -
[5]Edited by: Nova Fox on 08/06/2011 18:24:44I think my bottom line is I would like to see a space war online, a place where even small ships such as destoyers have thier purpose (goes back to the PDS ships) when the big boys go out and slug it out, and that loss of a capitol ship can hurt significanly instead of its loss being blown off as a normal casualty equatable to losing a frigate in a fight.

I do feel that the amount of warfare options in eve are very limited to just guns(drones and missiles are reskins/tweaks), logistics, targeting related ewar, counter logistics ewar, and cyno/jumps. However over clich'eing eve warfare can be a bad thing too like in the black ops battleships case. A successful evolution in eve warfare would be the stealth bomber, the bomber brings in a new dimenion in eve warfare in terms of untraditional tactics and coordination. I would like to see mines return but I know that would cripple the server in its old interation and an interation using the drone bandwidth would almost be just as bad for the offensive fleet with the massive number of drones today. It may be possible to fix that issue but it would either make it useless or just as bad as before.

As for commet the force field projection ship no its not a disengager or a -ewar blocker just a damage sponge that some ships maybe able to break though.

I have to agree with the range of combat is debateable on how far out we can artifically procure it and the sorts. I do wonder sometimes how possible it would be to lob something off grid into the grid with the help of a spotter ship, call in artillery strikes from somewhere. This would force an attacking fleet to send off a detachment to take out the 'artillery' nest so that off grid strikes on the main fleet battle would cease. I mean how much different is that from assigning fighters to a player with a carrier and the player warps off.

As for the honor harriginton reference, it true I taken the ship of wall reference from them, but in honor harriginton most of the ships are exactly the same cept some are bigger or newer toys on it. There are really only three kinds of military ships in honor harriginton at the end of the 11th book and that would be missile boats, pod missile boats, and carriers all seperated by throw weight class and technology. In eve we have more than just attack boats we have repair ships we have long range and short range brawlers, carriers, seige ships and the sorts.

To be clear though as I can be confusing at times.

I am not complaining about blobs.I am really not complaining about capitols just curious on how to avert the bigger is better flocking mentality to get to the best 'cap ship' possible whenever it be a titan or a super carrier or dread. I can view it as a problem and the solutions are just as problematic. I am complaining about blobs containing ships extremly low variety IE drake blobs would be an example and then having that blob win by near defalt against a mixed blob. Would like to see a more dynamic war field involving more tatics and roles than current.Pre-order your Sisters of ≡v≡ Exploration ship today, Updated 3APR11

A few more comments:- The solution you're probably looking for is to make capital ships very powerful support ships. Triage carriers and assigned drones (distributed power) are huge steps in the right direction. Supercarriers and Titans (consolidated power) are huge steps in the wrong direction.- The loss of a capital ship is more painful than a frigate loss - this is trivially true. However, no matter what the cost you're going to see powerful player empires fielding large fleets of very powerful ships. The best that can be hoped for is to encourage heterogeneous fleet compositions with distributed power distribution.- Again, I think that wormhole space addresses many of your complaints - capital ships are important, and rare, because of the simple difficulty of getting one into your system. Blobs are virtually impossible to organize just because of the difficulty of getting everyone through a single wormhole. There's no logging on a single cyno frig alt 4 regions over and Suddenly 500 (Super)Capitals.- If you can think of specific balanced mechanics/ships/roles that are missing, feel free to outline them specifically. General talk of revolutionizing Eve combat seems... useless. :-/

-Liang

Ed: To be clear, Wormhole space has its own flaws - like very low population caps (nothing to do) lending to empty wormholes in my timezone, it being virtually impossible to go on a roam through WH space, and it being virtually impossible to get a fight in a populated+connected WH.--Eve Forum ***** ExtraordinaireOn Twitter

Originally by:Liang NurenEd: To be clear, Wormhole space has its own flaws - like very low population caps (nothing to do) lending to empty wormholes in my timezone, it being virtually impossible to go on a roam through WH space, and it being virtually impossible to get a fight in a populated+connected WH.

Liang, as an on-again/off-again W-space inhabitant, I agree with a lot of what you've said, but I do have a follow-up question. How do you feel turning wormholes (in w-space only) into cosmic anomalies would affect things? That is, if you are in wormhole space, you don't need to scan down the various wormholes in your system?

Originally by:AamrrLiang, as an on-again/off-again W-space inhabitant, I agree with a lot of what you've said, but I do have a follow-up question. How do you feel turning wormholes (in w-space only) into cosmic anomalies would affect things? That is, if you are in wormhole space, you don't need to scan down the various wormholes in your system?

I think the ultimate effect there would be that we might see more roaming cruiser gangs, but ultimately wormhole pipes tend to be really short. We go days and weeks on end without seeing another WH connected to our C3/low sec static... so I think any improvements in that respect would be strictly of limited utility.

IMO, real improvement for WH space would come from making POSes suck less to live in and making more inter-WH connections. From there we just need locals to shoot at. Adding "easier" (read: soloable) content to high level WHs would be a major improvement for the small but competent corp, as well.

Originally by:Nova FoxThough I havent been to any front lines in eve in over two years I know that the problem is getting pertty bad when reports of nothing but alot of super carriers showing up and with little support and wiping out entire hostile mixed fleets with them. Many capitol ship fleets today could seem like they can go about with reckless abandon and plow though most issues without fear of losing the entire fleet easily as a battleship fleet could.

"Over two years" would mean you haven't been on front lines since Dominion was introduced, I'd say that's why you come off as a little misinformed. In large scale warfare, meaning in actual combat, local at 500+, reinforced node stuff and not the odd super hotdrop on a roaming gang, no one uses fleets of only supers unless you're shooting structures, because that would be dumb. Their use still revolves around subcapital fleets, meaning they either come in to mop up or force an escalation. If you drop 40-50 supers on 500 angry dudes you will no doubt wreck a lot of them, but you are at risk of also facing a humiliating loss; supercarrier drones (either fighters or conventional drones) are unreliable and titans are either glass cannons or useless bricks. Most of the reports about supercapitals crushing subcap fleets comes from engagements where one side refused to respond to the escalation; people are still afraid to commit supers in risky situations. However, when both sides field them, you get graveyards like O2O, Y-W and Uemon. Long story short, just because they are used in greater numbers than before doesn't mean subcapitals don't play an important role anymore.

Quote:I have to say though the most contributing to that problem is that capitols ships have certainly too much HP, way to much to be able to withstand entire fleets barrages and shrug it off with so much remote reps laying down on it.

The high EHP of supercarriers combined with the safety net that is logging off and disappearing after 15minutes is a problem indeed and definitely something CCP should consider looking at when they rebalance supers in the future. However, 30-40 dudes in subcapitals that know what they are doing can easily take one down in a couple minutes.

Again, in actual combat, supercapitals without a support fleet are a terrible idea.

Quote:If the enemy calls a ship alpha target there is litterally nothing the rest of the fleet can really do to save that one ship other than to call the other targets alpha and fire back. This creates a war of attricion of who can wittle away at the fleet the fastest.

This is nothing new. People have been asking CCP to implement some more tactical objectives that move again from the old DPS vs EHP aspect where more is always better.

Quote:Another factor though minor is the combat limititation to 250kms give or take, arena most of these battles take place in feels they needed to be boosted by a good 400kms to give breathing room and create zones of control as well as increase strategetic depth a little.

That would change absolutely nothing. It takes six seconds and 150km to get a result with combat probes and warp your fleet to it.

COPYRIGHT NOTICEEVE Online, the EVE logo, EVE and all associated logos and designs are the intellectual property of CCP hf. All artwork, screenshots, characters, vehicles, storylines, world facts or other recognizable features of the intellectual property relating to these trademarks are likewise the intellectual property of CCP hf. EVE Online and the EVE logo are the registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights are reserved worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. CCP hf. has granted permission to EVE-Search.com to use EVE Online and all associated logos and designs for promotional and information purposes on its website but does not endorse, and is not in any way affiliated with, EVE-Search.com. CCP is in no way responsible for the content on or functioning of this website, nor can it be liable for any damage arising from the use of this website.